Abstract
Gender theory explores ways in which humans describe and socially organize sexual difference. All societies engage in this process, thereby establishing definitions of normality and deviance. In many instances, the process also rests on perceived relationships between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, or the arrangements people have crafted to control and counteract the natural world, with culture seen as both superior and masculine. Almost universally, these social organizations and norms have led to patriarchal systems that favour males over females. Political institutions, law and language inscribe and enforce patriarchy.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
C. A. Bloss, Heroines of the Crusades (Muscatine, Iowa, 1853).
S. Geldsetzer, Frauen auf Kreuzzugen, 1096–1291 (Darmstadt, 2003). This book appeared after this chapter had been written.
M. Billings, The Crusades, 2nd edn (Stroud, 2000); B. Hamilton, The Crusades (Stroud, 1998); H. E. Mayer, The Crusades, trans. J. Gillingham, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1988); J. Phillips, The Crusades, 1095–1197 (Harlow, 2002); J. Richard, The Crusades, c. 1071-c. 1291 (Cambridge, 1999); J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (New Haven, 1987); J. Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995); S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1951–54).
R. C. Finucane, Soldiers of the Faith: Crusaders and Moslems at War (New York, 1983); R. Pernoud, The Crusaders (Edinburgh, 1963).
T. F. Madden, The Crusades: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 2002), does not consider gender or women at all. Hans Eberhard Mayer’s seminal bibliographies predated the entry of gender studies into the academy and do not include sections on either women or gender: Bibliographie zur Geschichte derKreuzzuge (Hanover, 1960) and ‘Literaturbericht tiber die Geschichte der Kreuzziige’, Historische Zeitschrift, 3 (1969), 641–736. James F. McEaney, Crusades: A Bibliography with Indexes (Hauppage, NY, 2002), includes ‘women’ as a category in his subject index but offers only two article citations.
C. Maier, ‘The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement: A Survey’, Journal of Medieval History, 30 (2004), 61–82. This essay appeared after this chapter was completed.
W. Porges, ‘The Clergy, the Poor, and the Non-Combatants on the First Crusade’, Speculum, 21 (1946), 1–21.
B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Passenger List of a Crusader Ship, 1250’, Studi Medievali, series 3, 13 (1972), 267–79.
J. A. Brundage, ‘Prostitution, Miscegenation and Sexual Purity in the First Crusade’, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R.C. Smail, ed. P. W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 57–65; reprinted in J. A. Brundage, The Crusades, Holy War, and Canon Law (London, 1991).
J. M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986) and ‘The Roles of Women in the Fifth Crusade’, in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 294–301.
L. Brady, ‘Essential and Despised: Images of Women in the First and Second Crusades, 1095–1148’ (unpublished MA thesis, Department of History, University of Windsor, 1992).
H. J. Nicholson, ‘Women on the Third Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 335–49.
M. Bennett, ‘Virile Latins, Effeminate Greeks and Strong Women: Gender Definitions on Crusade?’; K. Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women Warriors during the Crusades, 1095–1204’; S. B. Edgington, “Sont cou ore les fems que jo voi la venir?” Women in the Chanson d’Antioche’; M. R. Evans, “Unfit to Bear Arms”: The Gendering of Arms and Armour in Accounts of Women on Crusade’; S. Lambert, ‘Crusading or Spinning’; all in Gendering the Crusades, ed. S. B. Edgington and S. Lambert (Cardiff, 2002) [hereafter cited as Gendering].
Y. Friedman, ‘Women in Captivity and Their Ransom During the Crusader Period’, in Cross-Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. M. Goodich, S. Menache and S. Schein (New York, 1995), pp. 75–87, and ‘Captivity and Ransom: The Experience of Women’, in Gendering, pp. 121–39.
Rasa Mazeika, ‘Women Warriors in the Baltic Crusade Chronicles’, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500, ed. A. V. Murray (Tumhout, 1998), pp. 229–48.
C. Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998).
C. M. Rousseau, ‘Home Front and Battlefield: The Gendering of Papal Crusading Policy (1095–1291)’, in Gendering, pp. 31–44.
J. A. Brundage, ‘The Crusader’s Wife: A Canonistic Quandary’, Studia Gratiana, 12 (1967), 427–41, ‘The Crusader’s Wife Revisited’, Studia Gratiana, 14 (1967), 243–51, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Milwaukee, 1969).
M. Purcell, ‘Women Crusaders: A Temporary Canonical Aberration?’, in Principalities, Powers and Estates: Studies in Medieval and EarlyModern Government and Society, ed. L. O. Frapell (Adelaide, 1979), pp. 57–64.
M. R. Tessera, ‘Philip Count of Flanders and Hildegard of Bingen: Crusading against the Saracens or Crusading against Deadly Sin?’ in Gendering, pp. 77–93.
P. Adair, “Ego et uxor mea …”: Countess Clemence and Her Role in the Comital Family and in Flanders (1092–1133)’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1994); T. de Hemptinne, ‘Les epouses de croisés et pelerins flamands aux XIe et XIIe siecles: l’exemple des comtesses de Flandre Clémence et Sibylle’, in Autour de la premiere croisade, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996).
B. Hamilton, ‘Eleanor of Castile and the Crusading Movement’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 92–103.
J. Riley-Smith, ‘Family Traditions and Participation in the Second Crusade’, in The Second Crusade and the Cistercians, ed. M. Gervers (New York, 1992) and The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997).
Jonathan Phillips, ‘The Murder of Charles the Good and the Second Crusade: Household, Nobility, and Traditions of Crusading in Medieval Flanders’, Medieval Prosopography, 19 (1998), 55–76.
Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1993).
T. S. Miller, ‘The Knights of Saint John and the Hospitals of the Latin West’, Speculum, 53 (1978), 709–33.
A. J. Forey, ‘Women and the Military Orders in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Studia Monastica, 29 (1987), 63–92; H. J. Nicholson, ‘Templar Attitudes Towards Women’, Medieval History, 1 (1991), 74–80, ‘Margaret de Lacy and the Hospital of St. John at Aconbury, Herefordshire’, Journalof Ecclesiastical History, 50 (1999), 629–51, ‘The Military Orders and Their Relations with Women’, in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Z. Hunyadi and J. Laszlovsky (Budapest, 2001), ‘Women in Templar and Hospitaller Commanderies’, in La Commanderie: Institution des ordres militaires dans I’Occident médiéval, ed. A. Luttrell and L. Pressouyre (Paris, 2002); Jane Oliver, ‘The Rule of the Templars and a Courtly Ballade’, Scriptorium, 35 (1981), 303–6.
M. Dygo, ‘The Political Role of the Cult of the Virgin Mary in Teutonic Prussia in the 14th and 15th Centuries’, Journal ofMedieval History, 15 (1989), 63–80; H. J. Nicholson, ‘The Head of St. Euphemia: Templar Devotion to Female Saints’, in Gendering, pp. 108–20.
J. A. Brundage, ‘Marriage Law in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom ofJerusalem, ed. B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 258–71; J. Richard, ‘Le statut de la femme dans l’Orient Latin’, in La Femme 2: Recueils de la société Jean Bodin pour l’histoire comparative des institutions, 12 (Brussels, 1962), pp. 377–88.
B. Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem’, in Medieval Women, ed. D. Baker, Studies in Church History: Subsidia, 1 (1978), pp. 143–74, and ‘The Titular Nobility of the Latin East: The Case of Agnes of Courtenay’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. P. W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 197–203; H. E. Mayer, ‘Studies in the History of Queen Melisende’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 26 (1972), 93–189, ‘Die Legitimtat Balduins IV. von Jerusalem und das Testament der Agnes von Courtenay’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 108 (1988), 63–89; and ‘The Beginnings of King Amalric of Jerusalem’, in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 121–35.
S. Lambert, ‘Queen or Consort: Rulership and Politics in the Latin East, 1118–1228’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. J. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 153–69.
P. M. Holt, ‘Baybar’s Treaty with the Lady of Beirut in 667/1279’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. Edbury, pp. 242–5; S. Schein, ‘Women in Medieval Colonial Society: The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century’, in Gendering, pp. 140–53.
H. Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1984).
N. Christie, ‘Crusade Literature’, in Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Culture, ed. S. Joseph et al. (Leiden, forthcoming).
N. Hodgson, ‘The Role of Kerbogha’s Mother in the Gesta Francorum and Selected Chronicles of the First Crusade’, in Gendering, pp. 163–76.
M. Carrier, ‘Perfidious and Effeminate Greeks: The Representation of Byzantine Ceremonial in the Western Chronicles of the Crusades (1096–1204)’, Annuario dell’Instituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica Venezia, 4 (2002), 47–68; P. Frankopan, ‘Perception and Projection of Prejudice: Anna Comnena, the Alexiad, and the First Crusade’, in Gendering, pp. 59–76.
L. Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men: Muslims, Jews, and Masculine Ideals in Medieval Castilian Epic and Ballad’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. C. A. Lees (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 169–86, Women, Jews and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile (Ann Arbor, 1996).
E. Siberry, Troubadours, Trouveres and Minnesingers and the Crusades’, Studi Medievali, series 3, 29 (1988), 19–43, ‘The Crusader’s Departure and Return: A Much Later Perspective’, in Gendering, pp. 177–90.
A. Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford, 1997).
E. Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985).
G. Constable, ‘Opposition to Pilgrimage in the High Middle Ages’, Studia Gratiana, 19 (1976), 125–46, reprinted in G. Constable, Religious Life and Thought (11 th-12th Centuries) (London, 1979); J. Lane, ‘The Quest for the Holy Sepulchre: The Crusades and Beyond’, paper given at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium at Sewanee, Tennessee, 2001.
For patristic understandings of spirituality, see P. Allen, RSM, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC—AD 1250 (Montreal, 1985); E. A. Clark, ‘Ideology, History, and the Construction of “Woman” in Late Ancient Christianity’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2 (1994), 155–84; G. Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350–450 (London, 1995); B. Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995). For high medieval spirituality, see C. Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance ofFood to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992); J. Tibbetts Schulenberg, ‘The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation’, in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. M. B. Rose (Syracuse, 1986), pp. 29–72.
M. Green, ‘Female Sexuality in the Medieval West’, Trends in History, 4 (1990), 127–58.
Medieval Knighthood V, ed. S. Church and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1995); G. Duby, The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley, 1977), The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago, 1978), and ‘The Courtly Model’, in A History of Women in the West: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. C. Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); J. France, ‘Patronage and the Appeal of the First Crusade’, in The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. J. Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 5–20; The Ideals and Practice ofMedieval Knighthood II, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1988); R. W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999); P. L’Hermite-Leclercq, ‘The Feudal Order’, in A History of Women in the West, ed. Klapisch-Zuber; M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984) and Nobles, Knights, and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (London, 1996); C. S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia, 1985) and Ennobling Love: In Seach of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia, 1999).
R. H. Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991); Courtly Ideology and Woman’s Place in Medieval French Literature, ed. E. J. Burns and R. Krueger (Chapel Hill, 1985); E. J. Burns, Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia, 1993) and ‘Refashioning Courtly Love: Lancelot as Ladies’ Man or Lady/Man?’ in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. K. Lochrie, P. McCracken and J. A. Schultz (Minneapolis, 1997), pp. 111–34; J. W. Ferrante, Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York, 1975); R. W. Hanning, ‘The Social Significance of Twelfth-Century Chivalric Romance’, Medievalia etHumanistica, 3 (1972), 3–29; S. Knight, ‘The Social Function of the Middle English Romances’, in Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology & History, ed. D. Aers (Brighton, Sussex, 1986), pp. 99–122; C. Marchello-Nizia, ‘Amour courtois, société masuline et figures du pouvoir’, Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 36 (1981), 969–82; S. Westphal-Wihl, ‘The Ladies’ Tournament: Marriage, Sex, and Honor in Thirteenth-Century Germany’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14 (1989), 371–98.
W. Porges, ‘The Clergy, the Poor, and the Non-Combatants on the First Crusade’, Speculum, 21 (1946), 1–21; R. Somerville, ‘The Council of Clermont and the First Crusade’, Studia Gratiana, 20 (1976), 325–37.
J. A. Brundage, ‘Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law’, in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. J. T. Rosenthal (Athens, Ga, 1990), pp. 66–79; E. M. Makowski, ‘The Conjugal Debt and Medieval Canon Law’, Journal ofMedieval History, 3 (1977), 99–114.
J. M. Blythe, ‘Women in the Military: Scholastic Arguments and Medieval Images of Female Warriors’, History ofPolitical Thought, 22 (2001), 242–69; B. C. Hacker, ‘Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance’, Signs, 6 (1981), 643–71; M. McLaughlin, ‘The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe’, Women’s Studies, 17 (1990), 193–209; H. Solterer, ‘Figures of Female Militancy in Medieval France’, Signs, 16 (1991), 522–49; L. K. Stock, “Arms and the (Wo)man” in Medieval Romance: The Gendered Arming of Female Warriors in the Roman d’Eneas and Heldris’s Roman de Silence’, Arthuriana, 5 (1995), 56–83.
S. Farmer, ‘Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives’, Speculum, 61 (1986), 517–43.
Studies include: M. Erler and M. Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, (Athens, Ga, 1988) and Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2003); Women and Sovereignty, ed. L. O. Fradenburg (Edinburgh, 1992); J. Gillingham, ‘Love, Marriage and Politics in the Twelfth Century’, in his Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London, 1994); M. Howell, ‘Royal Women of England and France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century: A Gendered Perspective’, in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry HI (1216–1272), ed. B. Weiler (Aldershot, 2002); K. A. LoPrete, ‘The Gender of Lordly Women: The Case of Adela of Blois’, in Pawns or Players?: Studies on Medieval and Early Modern Women, ed. C. Meek and C. Lawless (Dublin, 2003); Medieval Queenship (New York, 1998), ed. J. Carmi Parsons; E. M. Searle, ‘Emma the Conqueror’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. J. Holdsworth, C. Harper-Bill and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 281–8; J. A. Truax, ‘Anglo-Norman Women at War: Valiant Soldiers, Prudent Strategists or Charismatic Leaders?’, in The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History, ed. D. J. Kagay and L. J. A. Villalon (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 111–25; W. J. Wilkins, “Submitting the Neck of Your Mind”: Gregory the Great and Women of Power’, Catholic Historical Review, 77 (1991), 583–94.
Adair, “Ego et uxor mea …”; T. de Hemptinne, ‘Les épouses de croises et pelerins flamands aux XIe et XIIe siecles: l’exemple des comtesses de Flandre Clémence et Sibylle’, in Autour de la premiere croisade, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996).
S. Schein, ‘Bridget of Sweden, Margery Kempe, and Women’s Jerusalem Pilgrimages in the Middle Ages’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 14 (1999), 44–58; K. T. Utterback, The Vision Becomes Reality: Medieval Women Pilgrims to the Holy Land’, in Pilgrims and Travelers to the Holy Land, ed. Br. F. Le Beau and M. Mor (Omaha, 1994), pp. 159–68.
The Medieval City under Siege, ed. I. A. Corfis and M. Wolfe (Woodbridge, 1995); Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest; D. Herlihy, ‘Land, Family and Women in Continental Europe, 701–1200’, Traditio, 28 (1962), 89–120; E. Lourie, ‘A Society Organized for War: Medieval Spain’, Past and Present, 35 (1966), 64–76; B. F. Reilly, The Kingdon ofLeon-Casrilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (Princeton, 1982).
Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men’; J. de Weever, Sheba’s Daughters: Whitening and Demonizing the Saracen Woman in Medieval French Epic (New York, 1998).
R. Abels and E. Harrison, ‘The Participation of Women in Languedocian Catharism’, Mediaeval Studies, 41 (1979), 215–51; M. Barber, ‘Women and Catharism’, Reading Medieval Studies, 3 (1977), 45–62; A. Blamires, ‘Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’ Lives’, Viator, 26 (1995), 135–52; J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980) and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York, 1994); S. F. Kruger, ‘Conversion and Medieval Sexual, Religious, and Racial Categories’, in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. Lochrie et al., pp. 158–79.
D. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996).
M. Carrier, ‘Perfidious and Effeminate Greeks: The Representation of Byzantine Ceremonial in the Western Chronicles of the Crusades (1096–1204)’, Annuario dell’Instituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica Venezia, 4 (2002), 47–68; N. Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh, 1960) and Heroes and Saracens: An Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste (Edinburgh, 1984); L. Mirrer, Women, Jews and Muslims in the Texts of Reconquest Castile (Ann Arbor, 1996).
Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (London, 1999); R. Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 2003); Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. C. A. Lees (Minneapolis, 1994); Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, ed. J. Murray (New York, 1999).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gerish, D. (2005). Gender Theory. In: Nicholson, H.J. (eds) Palgrave Advances in the Crusades. Palgrave Advances. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524095_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524095_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-1237-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52409-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)